All very true but the Game, & it is a Game or was should i say, will lose it's real core Support, but it doesn't give a **** because it actually isn't a Game any more, i was wrong, it's a Business & one Customer can & will get replaced by another..WalthammerUSA wrote: More and more people in England, sure. But in the rest of the world, the Premiership continues to grow in popularity. I read somewhere that between 100 million and 300 million Chinese watch it every week. (The population of the US as a whole is somewhere around 300 million now.) That's a lot of shirts, scarves and TV rights money. Here in the US, I get more football on TV than I ever got in France or Holland; I get almost every Premiership game at some point during the week, lots of them live. (Of course, I do have Setanta at home, which not many people have, but still...)
The point is that the Prem is just going to keep getting bigger, and the big clubs are going to keep getting richer. It's largely out of your hands now--it's a global product (brand, if you want to sound American), and foreigners (like me) are pumping money into it. Just look at the ownership of the big clubs (and of WHU, for that matter).
Still, I agree that the Prem is boring. Relegation battles are the most interesting matches! The CCC on Setanta has mostly been better viewing this season and has provided a lot more suspense. The lower-division playoffs have been great. But, then, most European leagues are boring now, dominated by a handful of huge clubs. The CL churns out the usual suspects every year, too. The UEFA Cup has provided much more entertaining football.
Maybe a younger generation of fans will respond by going to lower-league games and supporting the local side--but my guess is that they'll all become big four fans and be content to watch mostly on TV.
It's irrelevent if the Club means less to one Customer than it does another, as long a A Customer pays, the Club doesn't care..